The Prime Minister is in no position to criticise press behaviour when he is
so badly compromised by the News International scandal.

Memories are short – we have been here before. More than 20 years ago, amid a maelstrom of outrage about media intrusion into the lives of the Royal family, David Mellor, then the Heritage Secretary, told newspapers that they were “drinking in the Last Chance Saloon”.

The government established an inquiry, chaired by Sir David Calcutt QC, that led to the creation of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), in succession to the old Press Council.

In 1993, a follow-up inquiry concluded that the industry was incapable of properly policing itself, and recommended the creation of a statutory tribunal to oversee the Press. However, John Major decided to allow self-regulation to continue under the PCC, with a tougher code of practice.

There matters stood until yesterday, when David Cameron announced that, as a result of the phone hacking scandal, another inquiry is to be held, along similar lines. But he has pre-empted its findings: he stated that while press freedom is important, the revelations that led to the closure of the News of the World show that independent oversight is essential.

Whenever a prime minister says he believes in a free press, there is usually a “but” somewhere in the sentence. Eighty years ago, Stanley Baldwin denounced newspaper proprietors for exercising “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”.

It is a phrase that has echoed through discussions of press freedom and ownership ever since, and was implicit in Mr Cameron’s statement yesterday.

Of course, what happened at the News of the World was unconscionable. Hacking phones, whether of murder victims or celebrities, was illegal and should have been – and should now be – properly investigated by the police, with the miscreants brought to book. However, this must not be used as an excuse to impose the first statutory controls on the press since censorship laws were abolished in 1695.

Mr Cameron has a point when he says that the PCC has not behaved as robustly as it might have: under a weak leader, it failed fully to investigate the complaints about phone hacking. Yet he ignores the fact that it was not the police or the Government, but a newspaper – The Guardian – that exposed the full extent of the scandal.

And it is hard for the PCC to take criticism of its ineffectiveness from a Prime Minister who appointed Andy Coulson, the News of the World’s former editor, as his director of communications, and who is personally compromised by his association with senior News International executives.

The relationship between the media and politicians has always been ambiguous: they need, but rarely trust, each other. Yet that tension is the cornerstone of a free society. For all that Mr Cameron defends the principle of press freedom, statutory oversight would be a slippery slope to state meddling.

We do not know what system he desires, since that is for the inquiry to suggest. But the “starting presumption” is that it should be independent of press and government.

While this might sound like a reasonable compromise, such a body would inevitably work to a set of rules and principles laid down by Parliament.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, favours some new form of self-regulation, with greater non-industry involvement. But it is hard to see how that differs from the PCC, where “lay” members are a majority.

Anything resembling the tribunal proposed in 1993 would have wide-ranging powers to draw up and review a code of practice; restrain publication; inquire into complaints of alleged breaches; initiate its own investigations; require the printing of apologies; and impose fines and award compensation.

Such a regime would fundamentally compromise press freedom: for instance, it would almost certainly have prevented this newspaper disclosing the MPs’ expenses scandal.

There was more than an element of grandstanding in Mr Cameron’s actions yesterday. He knows that the public is rightly appalled by the goings-on at the News of the World. But in order to garner plaudits for taking tough action, he risks jeopardising something far more important.

To punish the whole of the press for News International’s misdemeanours is wrong; so, too, is the sneering disdain of the political classes for the tabloid newspapers that are read by the majority of their constituents.

It was a revolting spectacle to see Labour politicians cheer the closure of one of this country’s oldest newspapers, with the loss of 200 staff, most of whom had nothing to do with the scandal – especially since they only found their voice once News International had ended its support of their party.

The paper was amputated from the Murdoch empire to prevent the poison seeping into the rest of the corporate body. In closing it, the plurality of the British media, long one of its strengths, has been diminished – largely so that the country’s dominant private-sector media player can reinforce its commercial position through the acquisition of the remainder of BSkyB, a purchase that should now be investigated by the Competition Commission.

In truth, no one emerges from this fiasco with credit. News International’s handling of the scandal was woefully inadequate, and it is hard to understand how its chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, remains in post.

The police failed in their duty to investigate criminal activity, with some officers enjoying a potentially corrupt relationship with News of the World journalists.

And Mr Cameron showed poor judgment in appointing Mr Coulson to a senior position. It would be disgraceful if he compounded that mistake by undermining three centuries of free speech.